What Is Amazon EC2?

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) provides scalable computing capacity in
the Amazon Web Services (AWS)
cloud. Using Amazon EC2 eliminates your need to invest in hardware up front, so
you can develop
and deploy applications faster. You can use Amazon EC2 to launch as many or as few
virtual
servers as you need, configure security and networking, and manage storage. Amazon
EC2 enables
you to scale up or down to handle changes in requirements or spikes in popularity,
reducing
your need to forecast traffic.

Amazon EC2 enables you to run any compatible Windows-based solution on our
high-performance, reliable, cost-effective, cloud computing platform. For more
information, see Windows Server on AWS.

For more information about running your website on AWS, see Web Hosting.

How to Get Started with Amazon EC2

First, you need to get set up to use Amazon EC2. After you are set up, you are ready
to complete
the Getting Started tutorial for Amazon EC2. Whenever you need more information about
an
Amazon EC2 feature, you can read the technical documentation.

Related Services

You can provision Amazon EC2 resources, such as instances and volumes, directly using
Amazon EC2. You can also provision Amazon EC2 resources using other services in
AWS. For more
information, see the following documentation:

To monitor basic statistics for your instances and Amazon EBS volumes, use Amazon
CloudWatch. For
more information, see the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.

To automate actions, such as activating a Lambda function whenever a new Amazon EC2
instance
starts, or invoking SSM Run Command whenever an event in another AWS service
happens, use Amazon CloudWatch Events. For more information, see the Amazon CloudWatch Events User Guide.

To monitor the calls made to the Amazon EC2 API for your account, including calls
made by
the AWS Management Console, command line tools, and other services, use AWS CloudTrail.
For more
information, see the AWS CloudTrail User Guide.

To get a managed relational database in the cloud, use Amazon Relational Database
Service (Amazon RDS) to launch a
database instance. Although you can set up a database on an EC2 instance, Amazon
RDS offers
the advantage of handling your database management tasks, such as patching the
software,
backing up, and storing the backups. For more information, see Amazon Relational Database Service Developer Guide.

To import virtual machine (VM) images from your local environment into AWS and convert
them into ready-to-use AMIs or instances, use VM Import/Export. For more information,
see the
VM Import/Export User Guide.

Accessing Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 provides a web-based user interface, the Amazon EC2 console. If you've
signed up for
an AWS account, you can access the Amazon EC2 console by signing into the AWS Management
Console and
selecting EC2 from the console home page.

If you prefer to use a command line interface, you have the following options:

AWS Command Line Interface (CLI)

Provides commands for a broad set of AWS products, and is supported on
Windows, Mac, and Linux. To get started, see AWS Command Line Interface User Guide. For more
information about the commands for Amazon EC2, see ec2 in the
AWS CLI Command Reference.

Amazon EC2 provides a Query API. These requests are HTTP or HTTPS requests that use
the
HTTP verbs GET or POST and a Query parameter named Action. For more
information about the API actions for Amazon EC2, see Actions in the
Amazon EC2 API Reference.

If you prefer to build applications using language-specific APIs instead of submitting
a request over HTTP or HTTPS, AWS provides libraries, sample code, tutorials, and
other resources for software developers. These libraries provide basic functions
that
automate tasks such as cryptographically signing your requests, retrying requests,
and
handling error responses, making it is easier for you to get started. For more
information, see AWS SDKs and
Tools.

Pricing for Amazon EC2

When you sign up for AWS, you can get started with Amazon EC2 for free using the AWS Free Tier.

Amazon EC2 provides the following purchasing options for instances:

On-Demand Instances

Pay for the instances that you use by the hour,
with no long-term commitments or upfront payments.

Reserved Instances

Make a low, one-time, up-front payment for an instance, reserve it for a
one- or three-year term, and pay a significantly lower hourly rate for these
instances.

For an overview of Trusted Advisor, a service that helps you optimize the costs,
security, and performance of your AWS environment, see AWS Trusted Advisor.

PCI DSS Compliance

Amazon EC2 supports the processing, storage, and transmission
of credit card data by a merchant or service provider, and has been
validated as being compliant with Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard
(DSS).
For more information about PCI DSS, including how to request a copy of the AWS PCI
Compliance Package,
see PCI DSS Level 1.

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